Fear of Loneliness
In many ways, Moustakas (1961, p. 31) is looking to the impact which a saturation of transactional relationships has on us—and our fear of loneliness. As observed by David Reisman (who Moustakas quotes in the following passage), loneliness can be a sociological “disease” that is found in particular among those people who are pulled into relationships (the outer-directed person):
“Much of the loneliness anxiety in our society is not the psychiatric loneliness which results from rejection or abandonment in childhood. It is possible to live too much in the world, to try to escape loneliness by constant talk, by surrounding one’s self with others, by modeling one’ life from people in authority or with high status. Alienated from · own self, the individual does not mean what he says and does not what he believes and feels. He learns to respond with surface or approved thoughts. He learns to use devious and indirect ways, and to base his behavior on the standards and expectations of others. Cut-off’ from his own self, he is unable to have communal experiences. with others, though he may be popular, or to experience a sense of relation with nature. Many of these individuals love truth, yet their lives are predicated on appearances and false ties; they do not concentrate their energies enough to be able to become in fact what they are in inspiration.\ Literally millions of adults who are protected and loved, who experienced intimate relations in their early years, suffer the consequences of an impersonal, competitive world of self-denial and alienation. They often go to great lengths to escape or overcome the fear of loneliness, to avoid any direct or genuine facing of their own inner experience.
What is it that drives man to surround himself with the same external double-talk, the same surface interests and activities during his evenings at home as during his days at work? It is the terror of loneliness.”
Like his fellow humanists, Moustakas (1961, p. 34) leans toward addressing the nature and nurturing of health rather than the treatment of illness. He also (like many liberal-leaning humanists) borrows from Karl Marx and many social psychologists when introducing the concept of alienation:
“The experience of separation or isolation is not unhealthy any more than any condition of human existence is unhealthy. Ultimately each man is alone but when the individual maintains a truthful self-identity, such isolation is strengthening and induces deeper sensitivities and awareness. In contrast, self-alienation and estrangement drive one to void separation. The fear of loneliness is a sickness which promotes dehumanization and insensitivity. In the extreme, the person stops feeling altogether and tries to live solely by rational means and cognitive directions. This is the terrible tragedy of modern life–the alienation of man from his own feelings, the desensitization of man to his own suffering and grief, the fear of man to experience his own loneliness and pain and the loneliness and misery of others.”
